Open-source developers are hoping to be able to introduce Hi10P support to NVIDIA's Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) library.

Hi10P is an H.264 video codec profile that is used most often for encoding anime videos. Hi10P is short for High 10 Profile and atop H.264's High Profile there is support for 10-bits per sample of decoded picture precision.

Hi10P generally has to be software-decoded with the CPU using modestly-powered hardware, but published this week for Mesa was a OpenMAX Gallium3D state tracker. While there's already the VDPAU state tracker for Gallium3D, AMD worked out the OpenMAX state tracker and one of its benefits over the VDPAU implementation is being able to decode Hi10P content using the UVD video decode engine on Radeon GPUs.

The VDPAU state tracker doesn't support Hi10P decoding currently, but an open-source developer is looking to make that happen. Peter Frühberger looked at the OpenMAX state tracker and found that just two fields are missing to also decode Hi10P with VDPAU on UVD, so he's hoping to get the upstream UVD API bumped to support the additional fields as part of the H.264 support.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 10,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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